Result, but still no care for victims, says spokesman

Andrew Collins has been a driving force behind making George Pell and the Catholic hierarchy accountable for wrongdoing.

Andrew Collins, a survivor of Catholic child sex abuse. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Andrew Collins knows better than most that grief and trauma are as hard to read as they are to shake.

For many years, Mr Collins has been one of the public faces of ­institutional abuse in the Victorian city of Ballarat, a driving force ­behind making George Pell and the Catholic hierarchy accountable for criminal wrongdoing.

The common misconception was that once the abuse royal commission had reported and the new redress scheme was in place, it would become easier for survivors.

In many ways, both policy initiatives will help future survivors deal with the pain. But for people like Mr Collins, born in the late 1960s and victim of relentless historical abuse, the fallout has been deeply mixed.

“There is no ongoing care and support. It is incredibly disappointing,’’ he told The Australian of the government responses.

Mr Collins’ submission to the royal commission is heartbreaking, detailing how he was abused while at a state primary school and then at a Catholic high school in the Ballarat area.

He was sexually exploited by the Catholic establishment in Ballarat and has paid a devastating price.

The past decade has been his hardest yet, juggling his responsibilities as a spokesman for the survivors in the city and trying to continue to plough on with his life.

“I think the last decade right until the royal commission was just the hardest time of my life,’’ he said. “And I’m not any better and I don’t expect to be. If anything, there is a lot of my life that’s worse. It’s affected my wife, my children, everything.’’

Mr Collins and other survivors have taken up the fight against the Catholic Church, which has an awful history in Ballarat of abuse, obfuscation and failing to deal with perpetrators.

For Mr Collins, Pell represents the ultimate conundrum. Worshipped in his home town of Ballarat, Pell, until these guilty verdicts, has held an exalted position in the Catholic community. Despite his feelings towards the church, Mr Collins has a nuanced position on Pell, given any Catholic of note in the city has their cardinal story. “Everyone in Ballarat knows the name George Pell. There has been a pride there for all of Ballarat,’’ he said.

But Mr Collins laments what he says is a lack of action by Pell when he was at the Vatican on behalf of victims and all he has seen since Pell returned to Australia are the pictures from court or hospital.

“He’s always had that strength about him, but these pictures … he just looks like a frail old man,’’ he said.